Paul Crichton
Now is the time to start considering how you can grow your business after lockdown, focusing on potential goals, opportunities or cultural change.
Set out your goals
The current disruption being experienced by businesses across the world is a huge challenge. However, it may also be an opportunity for your firm. Start by thinking about your current market position, relative to your key competitors. Where would you like your firm to be in 12 months’ time? Is there an opportunity to overtake a competitor? Take some time to set out your key business objectives for the next year including the key deliverables that you will need to focus on each month.
New opportunities
Is there an opportunity to make some changes to your business model? Perhaps your firm has the opportunity to embrace automation, take a new approach to its distribution model or expand into new markets. As businesses return to normal in the next few months, they will have to contend with various unknowns. The firms that succeed will be the ones that are agile enough to pivot their strategic focus, when the right opportunity presents itself.
Cultural change
Changing the culture of a business is a difficult thing to do. However, the return to ‘business as usual’ post-pandemic gives firms an opportunity to drive cultural change. Will your firm embrace remote working after the lockdown? How will this affect the culture of your firm? It is important to set out your vision for the firm and communicate this to everyone across the business. Your vision should set out the key attributes of the new culture. Managers should be prepared to lead by example and develop their teams through training, follow-up and feedback. Sharing success stories of individuals and teams across your business will help to influence others and drive cultural change.
Be prepared
Your firm will need to be ready to take on new projects, execute business development plans and drive change. Take some time to map out the key behaviours that you will need your people to adopt as you move forward. If training is going to be needed, perhaps this could be provided, online, now. Doing as much pre-work as possible will ensure that your team is ready to hit the ground running as the country emerges from lockdown. Be careful not to take on too many new projects at once. Regardless of the size of your business, resources are finite. Prioritise the key projects that are likely to have the biggest impact on your business.
Review the goals that you set out at the beginning of your strategic planning process and identify the projects that align with the achievement of those goals. Ensure that your management team are on board and that they understand the overarching objectives of the firm. This will help each team to move forward in a joined-up manner.